Burnt Bodies
by 14ismyluckynumber
Summary: One-shot for SnowGemsxo! Mature language and themes. Burnt bodies and broken bones, screams and shouts, pushes and punches. They're the only thing that keeps us living, keeps us knowing that although this is wrong, and dangerous, that we cans still feel. But it's an addiction, and we need the darkness. We need it more than light.


She's slumped over on the bed, tears draining from her astonishingly brown eyes, that used to throw out beacons of light to him like lanterns in a cold winter darkness.

But right now they were the cold winter darkness.

And those eyes haunted him so, so much.

He had never been like this. Peeta Mellark was kind. He was a goddamn saint in everyone else's eyes. But there was something about her that just made him lose his mind. She was so small, but so feisty, and she just controlled his mind. She knew it too. And he just didn't understand! She made him crazy. But he loved it.

She clutched the raggedy toy, fur rubbed soft from decades of pain, the only relic from the family that the monster had stolen from her in the burning recess of flames. She used to lay there in the dark, wishing she had been the one claimed. She had been the one destroyed in the abscesses of death, deceased to a crisp in the blaze that killed everyone she ever actually believed in. Right now, she actually felt alight; her veins searing hot with a new kind of fire, an inferno that screeched and spiralled, tearing at her heart, her lungs, her head. It made her scream and yell, made her scratch at the thin skin that covered her, tear at the already scarred skin that covered him. She bowed her head with shame and the ever-burning heat that lay within her, her newly grown long hair that fell like a dark waterfall down past her shoulders shifting and covering her, like a shield. She'd only grown it to cover the cuts she'd inflicted on her own pale shoulders.

For Peeta, it wasn't warmth, wasn't a blaze. It was the cold gale that made itself known after the bomb dropped. The excess of wind that gathered itself into a crescendo of power, a freaking monster that controlled his docile self. The tornado sped through him, grasping all reason from his body. Screams ricocheted inside him, the pleading cries of the ashes from a family that was HIS, lost in the freezing gust that disturbed the silence that followed the boiling rain that stripped them of their skin.

Sometimes, it was almost a relief. When Johanna wasn't with him, he was the quiet that preceded the storm that threw itself at the empty ashes of District 12. He was stuck, trapped in the monotonous and frustrating cycle of trying to be there for everyone else, trying to pretend that he wasn't hurting anymore, when in actual fact he wanted to cry like a child, wanted someone to hold him close, whisper sweet promises into his ash blonde hair. When he was with her, he actually felt like he was still a living person, not just a broken corpse, because she was just as messed up as he was, she needed that comfort like he did. They needed each other. More than anything. But the sparked passion between them collided and they saw with their own eyes what happened when the raging ball of fire inside her collided with that frozen whip of a tornado inside him, they witnessed the fallout, felt the war.

And it was anger.

They would scream, and she would claw at him, and he would lay a hand on her, and feel so fucking ashamed of himself afterwards, but she wouldn't care, she was so torn up in the boiling screech of the fight that she'd would pack all her clothes, yell that she was leaving when they both knew she wasn't. She needed that all-consuming love that enveloped them both. She needed his arms around her in their messy bed of his house in the new District 12. She needed it, and she hated it. Johanna had never desired something this much, craved his dark embrace and the haunted look that glazed both their eyes. They would yell, and she would admire the indigo bruises that blossomed on his cheek, call him names, tell him he ruined her life. And he would spit the word bitch out at her, and let the hurt and pain of their desperate losses bleed out of him, even though he knew he would regret it so, so much afterwards. She would tell him he was a monster, and he would scream in frustration at her, because he felt like she couldn't understand that her temper was just as bad as his was. Neither would barely breathe, because the rage would choke their throats, rip their lungs as they tried not to let themselves give in to the drunkenness of their hate. He would stand there and gaze at the towering fire that consumed her tiny body, and she would watch the winds that filled his bones. They would see the rage and sadness that ate them alive, and each could almost see the pain that encircled both of them.

Neither would care, because they would be so involved in the torture that wracked their tired skin, the grief that burned their body like a curse.

And somehow, they would both love it.

But the rage would always end, always finish, and they'd always end up like this, him standing in the corner by the window, his head in his hands, her curled up in a mess on the bed, small fingers gripping the toy. It felt like a steel knife attacking his chest, and he felt the torment of what he'd done to her add to his deep despair, and he'd want to embrace her and run away at the same time, so he'd never hurt her again. She would try to breathe, try and get down from the high that encompassed her body because she knew it was wrong to feel so brilliant after something so terrible, but she also knew that the fire eating her body, licking at her bruised arms was a miracle, because it meant she could feel. So each would be stuck in the ridiculous self-hating loop of suffering, replaying the shouts and messages that found their way from a pair of lips during the desolate war of fire and ice, until one would rise and walk over.

Their lips would meet, and fire would melt ice, ice would freeze fire. They would feel complete for a while, and kisses and touches would own the hate, and each will tell themselves that the fight wouldn't be able to happen again, that the love was too strong.

But the hate was the love, and they will say something they don't mean, and they would fall back into the patterns, the routines that each other had become so used to.

But then she will utter a few words that halted the growing tension that was about to erupt and force itself on their burnt and broken bodies, as they stood in predatory stances, their eyes glowing a bright red and a steely blue.

"Peeta, we can't do this. I'm-I'm pregnant."

And their world will come crashing down, and the fire and ice will leave their bodies in moments as the sensation of incredulity and pacification overwhelm. He would run and find her in his arms and she would cry, and so would he as something other than the facades of their respective elements would emerge, and said elements would melt and burn out, giving way to something utterly different, as the brokenness of them both would start to heal, not by much, day by day, as her stomach grew, and she smiled with pride and he felt like he had finally been comforted by something other than howling winds. The hate that the messes of their lives had caused would show itself to be love as he held the tiny baby girl in his arms, as she opened her eyes and stared at the blue irises that matched her own newborn ones.

But for now, she still lies in agony and despicable joy on the worn sheets, and he still hurts himself, gasping with the distress and misery of what he'd done.

And the inferno and the tornado would still crouch inside of them, waiting for the next snap of the strings that the dead man still controlled them with, like marionettes with broken limbs.

For now, they still thought they needed the darkness.

But, they would soon see that what they really needed was the light that would heal their burnt bodies.


End file.
